Daily Archives: May 10, 2010

Locals Know teams up with Canadian celebrities to pick their favourite places

Locals Know, the Canadian Tourism Commission’s excellent website that highlights lesser-known parts of this country as chosen by ordinary Canadians, has turned to some extraordinary Canadians for their own hidden gems.

To help you visit any of these places, the website is also offering a contest sponsored by Westjet that is giving away 16 one-way flights to and from any of the airline’s Canadian destinations. It would be nicer to win a return ticket, but who knows, if you really like the place you are going to, you might not want to go home.

Royal Caribbean on the move

I love my cruising, but I can’t tell you how nice it was Saturday night to get back into my own bed after 18 days aboard Holland America’s Zuiderdam. Sailing into my home port of Vancouver was a treat—no aircraft to get on, no taxi, just a member of the family to drive me home.

Sitting at the computer, I am looking out at lush trees and the temperature says 18, instead of 30c, and that’s okay with me. Sadly, I was to be on my way to Barcelona this morning, but with a knee that is due for surgery acting up—again—I am hanging around my computer.

Royal Caribbean is up today with their 2011—2012 schedule for New Orleans and Galveston. This is a good thing for those in the west who get a little tired of the airplane shuffle to the Florida embarkation ports. Voyageur of the Seas will be moving from Galveston (she is in Galveston this winter) to New Orleans. Mariner, which couldn’t make a go of it in southern California sailing the Mexican Riviera, moves to Galveston.

It’s been a lot of years since Royal sailed out of New Orleans and it’s just another feather in the cap of this great city that has suffered so much. I can think of nothing better than hanging around New Orleans for a few days then jumping on a cruise.

Dan and Jordan Pious win a not-so-amazing Amazing Race finale. Can you feel the love tonight?

Number of miles traveled: 40,000. Number of continents crossed: Five. Number of people happy at Sunday’s Amazing Race result: Two, if you count winners Jordan and Dan Pious, aka “Brothers Gay/Not Gay.”

The finale began with a spat over backpacks at an airport counter in Shanghai, China. Jordan Pious plonked his backpack ahead of Race favourites — and fan favourites — Jet and Cord McCoy’s backpacks, while the cowboys were resting on the airport floor. Jet and Cord, aka “The Cowboys,” were already at the ticket counter, waiting for it to open. They reasoned that being ahead of the brothers Pious meant that, well, they’d be ahead of them in line when the counter opened.

Jordan Pious said his backpack gave him right-of-way.

The cowboys thought this a bit, uh, uncool, and Jordan gave it back to them, a bit, well, piously, saying: “You can hate the game all you want. Just don’t hate the player.”

Hel-lo!

Whatever happened to The Amazing Race being all about cultural awareness and travel broadening-the-mind and being in a giving mood and all that?

The lesson to be learned: Nice guys finish second. If you want to get ahead of someone in line, just use your backpack as a battering ram. Like the man says, blame the game, not the player.

The hostility was obviously catching. When Caite Upton, the lovely former Miss Teen USA contestant, and her lunk-headed boyfriend Brent Horne clashed during yet another ill-fated cab ride — this one was in San Francisco, so they couldn’t very well blame it on “the China” — Brent snapped at her, “Just shut up. Don’t even talk, because all you’re going to do is cry.”

See, folks, this is why people with deep pockets fly business class, or, better yet, first class. Fewer domestic spats that way. In economy, you never know who you’re going to end up separating in mid-flight.

Of course, these feelings of peace and good will were nothing compared with what happened at the finish line, at San Fran’s Candlestick Park.

Brandy Snow, the 40-year-old stylist/make-up artist from Los Angeles and the younger — and more bitter — half of the duo Caite nicknamed “the mean lesbians,” — owing to their constant ridiculing her behind Caite’s back — was waiting at the finish line, spoiling for a fight with the former Miss Teen

Whatever. Brandy’s rage had been simmering ever since Caite and Brent “U-Turned” them — Amazing Race lingo for a 30-minute penalty, leveled by one team against another — causing Brandy’s elimination, along with that of her partner, consultant Carol Rosenthal.

Jordan welcomed the third-place Caite across the finish line with a delighted, “Come on, Peach! There’s my little Peach! She’s my little Peach. Nice job, Peach!” and that was all it took to set Brandy off.

“Caite,” Phil Keoghan said, stirring the pot: “Was there anything that you wanted to prove, coming on this race?”

(No, no, no, Phil, let it go!)

“I really just wanted to prove that I am an intelligent person,” Caite replied, in all innocence. “I was able to finish the Amazing Race and be in third place, and I’m very proud of myself.”

“Caite,” Keoghan continued, “you are the only woman to have finished this race in the final three, but there are two women over there who feel—”

(No, no, no, Phil: Let it go!)

“You guys,” Caite started.

“I don’t want to hear sorry from you!” Brandy said, cutting her off in mid-sentence. “You purposely whacked us. You said you wanted to be the only woman left standing, and you are.

“Logically, you turn teams that are stronger,” Brandy continued. The cowboys should have been U-Turned.”

(Talk about a well-timed reaction shot: The camera quickly flipped to the cowboys’ faces, with an expression that said: ‘Whoa, there, whoa! What did we do?’)

“You can’t seem to think logically,” Brandy continued, as the other Race finishers looked on with a mixture of nervous laughter and abject terror. “I don’t want to hear ‘sorry’ from you.”

Hey, Caite may not be bright, but she knows when to stand her ground.

“Maybe if you started to treat people a little nicer,” she said calmly.